One or more hearing instruments may be worn on one or both sides of a person's head to deliver sounds to the person's ear(s). An example of such hearing instruments includes one or more hearing aids that are used to assist a patient suffering hearing loss by transmitting amplified sounds to one or both ear canals of the patient. While the patient (hearing aid wearer) benefits from amplified sounds such as speech and music, other sounds when being amplified may be unpleasant. For example, for many hearing aid wearers, especially those who are new to wearing hearing aids, transient sounds can be very unpleasant. Examples of the transient sounds include sounds of placing dishes or silverware on a hard surface and the closing of cupboards or doors. While such transient sounds may not be loud enough to trigger output compression limiting, they may still be perceived by hearing aid wearers as annoying. Thus, there is a need to reduce the harshness of the transient sounds while not affecting the sounds that are intended to be heard by the hearing aid wearers.